The last couple of episodes of "Mad Men" were very emotionally draining, so I was satisfied with the slow-burning dénouement of the finale. In the conclusion to Season Five, the characters struggle with their places in a changing world and look for new paths to happiness. Spoilers ahead.

-- Don has a toothache and refuses to see the dentist, hoping the pain will just "go away" (it never does, Don). Marie, Megan's mother, is visiting again and ineffectively tries to console Megan when she receives a rejection from an agency. However, Marie's not supportive of Megan's acting dreams at all.

-- Pete sees old fling Beth on the train to work; her pig of a husband explains that she's visiting her sister. Beth positively runs away at the sight of Pete.

-- At the office, Don sees someone who looks like his half-brother, Adam, who committed suicide in Season One -- a manifestation of Don's guilt about Lane's suicide, perhaps.

Things That Stood Out

The shot of the partners standing in front of the windows (see photo).

The long shot of Don walking away from Megan as she auditions for the "Beauty and the Beast" commercial seemed to have so many interpretations. Megan got the "fairytale" she wanted, but will Don start pulling away from her?

The hilarious scene of Roger standing naked in front of a hotel window, arms outstretched, clearly on LSD.

Pete really got punched a lot this season...

-- Peggy's absence is not doing the creative team any favors -- their pitch for a downmarket pantyhose ad for Topaz is rejected. The client actually says he thought having input from women "was a given here." Take that, workplace sexism! At rival agency Cutler Gleason and Chaough, Peggy's busy exercising her new power as copy chief and bossing minions around. Her director tells her to come up with a pitch for a women's cigarette account.

-- Pete gets a surprise call from Beth, who wants to meet him at a hotel for an afternoon rendezvous. He's reluctant because she stood him up last time, but she says it could be their "last chance." Intrigued, Pete goes to the meeting and finds out that Beth is planning to undergo electroshock therapy for her depression, and that she won't remember him afterwards.

-- Joan, while announcing the quarter's highest profits yet, tries to caution the agency about overspending -- who else will be the voice of reason now that Lane's gone? She shows Don Lane's death benefits and wonders if there wasn't something she could have done to stop the suicide, like...sleeping with Lane. Don insists that there was nothing either of them could have done, but doesn't mention the fact he fired Lane for embezzlement. He also sets aside $50,000 of the benefits for Lane's widow.

-- Megan and a friend are going over casting ads, when the friend asks Megan for help landing a commercial that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is shooting. Megan agrees to help, but later asks Don about the audition for herself. Don refuses, saying "You don't want it this way. You want to be somebody's discovery, not somebody's wife." The next day, Marie tells a sulking Megan to stop feeling sorry for herself, calls her an ungrateful little bitch, and leaves for a pre-planned evening with Roger Sterling.

-- Lane's widow, coldly contemptuous of the money Don's offering her, tells him he's only trying to make himself feel better. She pulls out the picture of Dolores that Lane was hiding in his wallet and accuses the agency partners of turning Lane into a stranger.

-- Roger tells Marie he wants to try LSD again, and asks her to make sure his trip doesn't go south. She refuses, and tells him that's not what she agreed to when she decided to meet him.

-- Don arrives home to find Marie gone and Megan drunk and depressed. She tries to seduce him, saying "This is what you want, right? Me to be waiting for you at home?" He leads her to bed to sleep it off, and when Marie gets back, yells at her for leaving Megan in that condition. Marie says Megan is Don's problem now, and that if he props her up through the disappointments, he will get the perfect wife he's always wanted. Don is understandably creeped out, because the last thing he wants is another Betty Stepford wife.

-- He finally visits the dentist, and has to have a tooth extracted. When the dentist anesthetizes him with laughing gas, Don has another vision of Adam, who says: "You're in bad shape; it's not your tooth that's rotten."

-- When Pete visits Beth after her electroshock treatment, she doesn't recognize him, and he tries to excuse himself by saying he's there to see a friend. He confesses to her that his "friend" couldn't get over a woman that he'd had an affair with, and that he didn't know whether getting older was worth it.

-- Don accidentally meets Peggy in a movie theater, and they chat. He tells her that he's proud of her successes, and for moving on. "I just didn't know it would be without me," he admits.

-- On the train, Pete gives away that he's been having an affair with Beth, and her husband punches him. After the train conductor intervenes, Pete riles up the train conductor with an "I pay your salary" attitude and gets kicked off. When he lies to Trudy that he fell asleep and drove his car into a ditch, she says that they'll start looking for an apartment in Manhattan for him.

-- Joan leads the other partners to a higher floor that they plan to lease for more office space. The five -- Bert, Roger, Joan, Pete and Don -- stand in front of the giant windows and look out. In the final scene, Megan gets to audition for the commercial. Don watches for a bit, then heads out to a bar. As he orders an Old-Fashioned, a girl walks up to him and asks "Are you alone?"

More 'Mad Men'

The future seems bright for the ad agency, but the partners have lost so much to get there. Don "lost" Peggy, Joan lost her dignity, and Lane lost his life. Roger realized that LSD enlightenment didn't last, and Pete realized, as he said to Beth, that his work and home life was a "temporary bandage on a gaping wound." Of course, we don't know if any of the characters will ever find satisfaction; right now Peggy seems to be the only one truly happy with her new career. Perhaps we'll find out next year.

I think this season was the best yet for the show, and I'm still hoping that we'll see the eleventh episode on the Emmy list. How about y'all?